Esperance and the Pink Lake which wasn’t pink

Emily

After spending an incredible three weeks travelling along the beautiful coast of Western Australia, we were getting closer to the boarder. Our last stop before we began to drive inland, towards Norseman was Esperance. 

Esperance is a lovely town well known for its pink lake and salt flats. Wow, a pink lake! I thought. Well, I thought wrong. 

The lake wasn’t even pink! It was still a great stop and very fun to drive Vince around on the salt flats, but no pink! I don’t think you’re meant to drive here without a four wheel drive, as we had a very confused/concerned elderly couple park next to us and ask us way to many questions about our car.

 That didn’t stop us from driving around anyway. Only around the edge of course and for a maximum of ten minutes. 

We stopped in the town for lunch and coffee. After we took a walk a long the Pier to stretch our legs and “brush off the cobwebs” as my Nan would say. 

This was the stage of the selfie stick with no bend. What a game changer that purchase was. This unfortunately was also the stage of the matching flip flops, after stumbling upon a $2 sale in Target that day. As you can see they didn’t have them in my size but I refused to let the $2 sale pass me by. 

So with our new flip flops, plenty of photos and full bellys we decided to press on and wave goodbye to the coast for a short while. I couldn’t help but feel slightly cheated that the Pink Lake wasn’t pink. 

Driving the Coolgardie-Esperance Highway and looking for a good camping spot, something caught our eye… PINK! We had to pull a u-turn and do a tiny bit of possible trespassing but we had finally found one. A pink lake. Hooray!  

Now the day trip was complete. 

I wasn’t sure what the Pink is caused from and having grown up watching The Simpsons, my best guess was a toxic leak which caused three eyed fish. 

I consulted my good friend Google and was given a much more logical explanation.

Basically, the microorganisms in the lake cause the salt content to create a red dye which helps produce the colour, as well as red bacteria present in the salt crusts. The vibrancy depends on the season, cloud coverage and time of day. The colour is most vibrant on overcast days and after rain because of the fresh nutrients. As you can see from my photos there wasn’t a cloud to be seen and it hadn’t rained in a while. When we had traveled a fair few kilometers, thats when we saw the other lake.

Mystery solved and no three eyed fish (sadly). 

Published by Emily

A strong love and passion for travel, dogs, coffee, dogs and motorbikes. Yes, I did say dogs twice.

16 Comments

  1. I thought about, once I get to Australia in a couple of weeks, to visit the Lake Hillier. That should also be an amazing pink lake, and might give rise for some pretty pictures and or videos 🙂

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  5. Dear Emily,
    I love your step-by-step detail about your trip. Glad you found your pink lake. Someone just told me about the algae bloom off the coast of California. The waters glow at night. Cool stuff up there.
    Many more adventures to you,
    Gary
    On Sat, Jul 15, 2017 at 6:26 PM The Blog of Travel wrote:
    > Emily posted: “After spending an incredible three weeks travelling along > the beautiful coast of Western Australia, we were getting closer to the > boarder. Our last stop before we began to drive inland, towards Norseman > was Esperance. Esperance is a lovely town wel” >

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  11. Glad you got to see a pink lake! I wanted to see one, although I’m sure I’ve heard from a few people that it tends to only be pink at certain times of day so knowing my luck I wouldn’t have got it right haha. Your explanation definitely makes sense!

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